From time to time we like to post articles that show similarities between Jewish heritage issues in Europe and elsewhere.
The historic Coming Street Jewish cemetery in Charleston, SC, founded in 1754, is one of the oldest in the United States — and older than many Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Care, conservation and documentation are all priorities here, as well as managing the site for visits by tourists, scholars and genealogists researching family history.
Samuel D. Gruber posts about its history and physical state as well as some of the narratives behind the people buried here.
(ISJM) In early November I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the most beautiful cities in America and a place with one of the oldest and richest Jewish histories. Besides visiting the beautiful Greek Revival Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (KKBE) synagogue (1841), about which I have often written and lectured, I had my first visit to the congregation’s old cemetery on Coming Street – one of the oldest Jewish sites in the New World, and one that deserves to be among the most celebrated.
The cemetery, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the repository of the human remains of Charleston’s early Jewish community, but it is much more than that. The gravestones and monuments tell the history of what was once America’s largest and most prosperous Jewish settlement. I was fortunate to learn more of this history and the particulars of the cemetery from Anita Moise Rosenberg, President of the KKBE Board and congregant and cemetery historian Randi Serrins.
Jews have lived in Charleston since at least 1695, twenty-five years after the founding of the colony. KKBE was organized in 1749 and the congregation built its first impressive synagogue in 1791. The Coming Street Cemetery originated as the De Costa Family plot in 1754 became a community cemetery in 1764. It is the second oldest Jewish cemetery in North America. The oldest identifiable grave is that of Moses D. Cohen, the first religious leader of Beth Elohim, who died in 1762. A second section dates from 1841, and was developed by KKBE members who seceded over the installation of an organ in the synagogue and formed Orthodox Congregation Shearith Israel. After the Civil War, the two congregations reunited and the brick dividing wall was removed.
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